July 30 - October 29, 2006

Public Reception: Sunday, August 30, 2 pm - 4 pm

Statement
This body of work is drawn from paintings of society women done by Jean Dominique Ingres, the French Classical painter of the 19th Century. The paintings started as a continuation of previous figurative works, with an interest in the formal aspects the source paintings - the pose, the rendering of materials and so forth - but soon turned to what I saw as the artifice in Ingres' work. The idealization of the figures and the idealization of the environments hid the artistic license Ingres took with the anatomy of the women. So I pushed that incongruity by incorporating further the figures in an abstract context. Like engenders like and from these paintings arose the strictly abstract work, included here, the two paintings Belle Epoque - I and Belle Epoque - II. My present work continues in that vein.
- Michael Stevenson

Bio
A native of Montreal, Michael Stevenson actively exhibits in the United States and Canada. He received his MFA in Phoenix, where he also received an MA in Art History in Aztec art of the 1600's. His art work, both paintings and prints, draw as much from concepts and writings in the fields of art history, epistemology, science and the history of science as they do from studio practice. He has lived in Rome and Berlin and has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia and Asia Minor. His work is found in private, public and corporate collections in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and Switzerland.

Belle Epoque I

Vicomtesse